Wednesday, 6 July 2016

The Rawnboy Archive

It did my old heart good to see so much love being shown for Ron Sexsmith over at Charity Chic Music the other day (here) - in a just and proper world he'd be a huge star. Ron has released over a dozen fine albums in the past 20 years, though he has also produced a vast hidden archive of acoustic performances that many are unaware of. On his Rawnboy YouTube channel, Ron regularly shares his own solo stripped back cover versions, filmed live, straight onto his laptop, recorded wherever he happens to be in his house or hotel room, whenever the mood takes him. He started sharing these intimate performances three years ago and is still adding to them once or twice a week. The songs Ron chooses to sing range from the classic; Beatles, Stones, Motown, Cohen, Dylan, Kinks etc, to the less predictable; Pink Floyd, Horslips, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Boston, Culture Club, Deep Purple, Kiss, Genesis etc and touches on all points in between. In addition to the covers, Ron also takes the time to revisit his own repertoire, offering up bare-bones solo readings of the majority of his back catalogue.

Here are just a few samples from Rawnboy, but I warn you - once you start digging through the huge archive, it's very hard to stop.

6 comments:

Brilliant. I do love Ron's voice, but I wasn't aware of Rawnboy. If he chose to release those, I would pay him good money for a CD copy. He was born to sing Heaven Knows... but his Come On Eileen was genius!

Rol. A CD? Wait until you check out the sheer quantity of music on Rawnboy. More like a multi-volume box set!

John. I've heard a couple of stabs at 'Secret Heart' over the years, though not Rod the Mod's (or Nick's come to that) to the best of my recollection. 'Wait in Line'? Did you mean 'Get in Line'? A corker. http://unthoughtofthoughsomehow.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/world-thats-long-gone.html

This is wonderful stuff. I knew about some of Ron's covers as, as a Kinks fan, I'd already heard his cover of 'Schooldays'. http://tinyurl.com/ze6k4ps Thing is, outside Kinkdom, Schooldays is not particularly well known but his rendition of it proved that he knew the song really well and that he wasn't just strumming it out for a YouTube hit. Fair play to Ron and fair play to you for highlighting him.